_Interest in the navy and in naval matters is fortunately greater than it used to be, but there is still a vast amount of ignorance existing in the minds of the public respecting our warships and our sailors. When an explosion occurred recently on the Royal Sovereign a man in the street remarked to his friend, “How lucky it didn’t happen when we went to Margate on her last summer!” The navy is certainly not so much in the public eye as is the army, still it should be the desire of every Briton to know even a little about the service for which he pays so much. Many people seem to imagine that torpedo-boats do their work below the waves, and have but very hazy notions respecting the working of the torpedo or the functions of the destroyer._ _It was recently remarked to the writer by one who has had a large experience in catering for the mental needs of the British public that we were not a mechanical nation, and that while Americans would naturally be interested in such a subject as submarine warfare, Britons would only display an apathetic attitude towards it. Perhaps the general lack of interest in scientific matters is due to the fact that little trouble is taken to place them before readers in an attractive form. There is no doubt that the Germans, the French, and the Americans are far more alive to the importance of science, and are far more ready to discuss inventions, discoveries, and scientific topics than we are ourselves._ _That his work will appeal to a very large class of readers the writer has little hope. He trusts, however, that those who do read it will be encouraged to pursue the subject a little more deeply, and that inventive minds may be induced to apply their ingenuity to the designing of weapons for under-water warfare._ _When we decided to add submarines to our navy, we had to adopt the design of an American, Mr. Holland, because no other was then available. Similarly the system of wireless telegraphy used on our men-of-war is the invention of an Italian._ _“We have started,” says a well-known English professor, “all the branches of engineering; we have invented nearly all the important things, but the great development of these things has gone out of the hands of the amateurs of our nation. It is because our statesmen are Gallios who ‘care for none of these things,’ because they know nothing of science.”_ _It was an Englishman who invented the Whitehead torpedo; it was in the brain of an Englishman that the idea of the torpedo-boat destroyer was evolved. Are there not those who will bring their inventive talent to bear on the perfecting of the diving torpedo-boat and of the many contrivances that are needed to make it an efficient weapon of offence and defence?_